U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Ambassador Gregory Schulte asserted the U.S. Department of Defense’s intentions to cooperate with commercial satellite companies in leveraging hosted payload capabilities at the Oct. 4 Hosted Payload Summit in Washington, D.C.
   U.S. military procurement procedures and the enactment of policy to support hosted payload and other private-industry space programs have long been areas of confusion for the satellite industry. Complex legal issues and ITAR laws prohibiting the launch of military hosted payloads have only added to that confusion. Schulte, however, provided hints of a potential new direction in government policy during his remarks. “Our existing deterrent strategies for space attacks hasn’t changed much from the 1950s,” said Schulte. “We are working on an update to the current National Transportation Policy to give us more access to international allies and partners as options. We think it is in our national security interest to do so as hosted payloads could provide the door to more international cooperation among allies and assist the Pentagon in developing counter-measures against hostile actions in space.”            
   Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation to reform U.S. satellite export controls, which received a strong endorsement from the Satellite Industry Association (SIA) in a Nov. 2 statement. The “Safeguarding United States Leadership and Security Act of 2011 (H.R. 3288),” introduced Nov. 1, would authorize the President to remove satellites and related components from the U.S. Munitions List that are typically subject to restrictions and Congressional oversight.
   In the SIA statement, Association President Patricia Cooper said the bill dramatically improves the competitiveness of the U.S. satellite and space industries and ensures innovation. “SIA and the satellite industry commend the bipartisan co-sponsors of this bill for their leadership in updating an outmoded and overly-restrictive regulation instituted more than a decade ago, which has adversely affected the U.S. space industrial base. We encourage Congress to pass H.R. 3288, both to reinforce our nation’s primacy in space technology and to support American jobs and competitiveness.”
   If passed, H.R. 3288 would supersede 1999 legislative provisions that required all commercial satellites, satellite components, associated technical data and related ground equipment to be treated as munitions for export licensing purposes, regardless of their technical sensitivity. The bill was co-sponsored by both Republican and Democratic representatives in Congress. “We are looking to commercial hosted payload developers, providers and operators to help us think of innovative solutions to meet government and military needs,” said Schulte during his address. “The U.S. National Space Security Strategy that we put forth on behalf of the administration was our way of saying that we need to change the way we think about developing resilient capabilities in space.”            
   Schulte stressed the word “resilience” as a focal point of the Pentagon’s efforts to leverage new policy and procurement strategies in working with commercial hosted payload suppliers. “We are placing added emphasis on tackling the congested, contested and competitive aspects of space security by strengthening the resilience of our space architecture. The functional capabilities that hosted payloads provide can no longer be viewed as an experiment,” he said. “Recent examples in orbit, such as the ORS-1 satellite and the CHIRP payload onboard SES-2, show that cost over performance should not be the one, defining approach to meeting requirements. Some would say that the United States can’t afford these complex systems, but the defense department would argue that the United States can’t afford to miss out on the security capabilities they deliver.”